Over the last few years, the creative industries have come represent one of Wales’ fastest-growing sectors with an annual turnover of more than £2.2 billion and over 56,000 people employed.

Encouraging more entrepreneurship within the sector is vital and that is why the creative enterprise category at the Wales Startup Awards is again being sponsored by the Start-Up Stiwdio at the University of South Wales, the first dedicated incubation space at any Welsh University that has been designed to help develop and grow new business ideas.

According to Richie Turner, incubator manager at the Stiwdio, creative entrepreneurs are vital to not only developing new businesses in their sector but in supporting other firms to grow.

“Startup Stiwdio is based at USW’s creative industries campus in Cardiff and we know the importance of supporting entrepreneurship in this sector and its contribution to the Welsh and UK economies. We also know that the creative industries rely upon constantly innovating both its content and its business model for success. Creative entrepreneurs don’t just benefit their own industry but play a vital role in supporting the growth of many other key sectors through their input into design, marketing and digital promotion”

“We are delighted to be supporting the creative category at the Wales Startup Awards for the third year in succession and again, all the shortlisted candidates will be able to join our incubator network and benefit from our dedicated creative entrepreneurship business development programmes.”

Last year, the winner of the category was Newport based Ollywood. Its founder, Oliver Williams said:

“It was a real honour to be both nominated and win the Creative Start-Up of the Year. We have worked hard since starting the business and care about our clients and customers. To be recognised for our creativity and hard work is everything we could ask for.

Oliver also noted that like many other Welsh startups, dealing with the pandemic has had its challenges but that he and the business have survived and are looking to grow further.

“The last year has been hard for everyone and we have had to massively diversify and work on survival techniques. Nearly all of our big commercial contracts disappeared due to bans on budget spending, so we had to take on smaller domestic projects to survive. I am proud to say we did, and I have kept all my fantastic creative team in a job as well taking on a new apprentice and carpenter to join our team as we look to come out of this pandemic stronger than ever”

“Our plans for the future are to let both our new and old clients and customers know we are here and will  bring our award-winning creativity and ideas to your projects. We have upgraded both our equipment and team and are ready to do all the exciting projects again that people will be craving for as things start to plan to open”

The Wales Start-Up Awards are the only awards in the UK that focus on celebrating the success of new businesses. To enter this year’s awards, companies need to have started trading on or after June 1st 2018 and be based in Wales.

For further information, go to www.walesstartupawards.com